Bedside table Makeover

Hate me if you want, but I painted an old bedside table I found at the Restore. I got it for $13.50, thanks to my frequent shoppers discount :) otherwise it would have been $15. Either way a great deal since it was solid mahogany. Yes I could have just brought it home, cleaned it up and used it as is and some pieces I do that with. I would never paint or repurpose a real antique that belonged to someone's family. I just can't bring myself to so it. I recently got an old sled from a friend of mine and I was thinking of turning it into a pot rack to hang from my ceiling until I turned it over and saw and inscription and Christmas 1960 on it. So for now it is sitting in the corner of my living room looking lovely and waiting for Christmas to be draped in garland and lights. I respect antiques, but most Restore or garage sale finds are in bad shape so it it better to paint them or turn them into something else. That being said, I found this sweet bedside table at the Restore.

I didn't realize it at the time, but the door had a crack in it, so I don't feel terrible about painting it.

So I removed the hardware and stripped and sanded the whole thing. It had years of wax build up on it, so it was a pretty time consuming project. Once I had sanded it down, I used two of the oops paints I had on hand and painted the body red and the drawer and door off white. I was frustrated because I had brush strokes on it. I talked to my best friend who also refinishes furniture and she told me to sand it after I painted it. (WHAT?!) She said that would get rid of the brush strokes. Still being new at this I also looked online for ways to avoid brush strokes. I was too far gone to do most of them so I grabbed my sander and got started. It was looking nice. The brush strokes were disappearing, I was thrilled. Then I saw wood! Oh no!!!! Well Shabby Chic it is then, I decided. I sanded it some more and then when I was satisfied with the look it was time to finish it. I used....

   

I had to use the natural color because that is all I can find around here, but I am still on the lookout for the dark wax. I think the dark wax looks nicer when you are going for that shabby chic look. I put the wax on, let it sit for 15 minutes and then I buffed it. I felt like it needed a little more so I put on another layer of wax and again buffed it out. 

This is my finished product.

 I'm in love with it and it is great as a bedside table because all of the things I used to stack on top are now able to be stored inside. Some people don't like the two color scheme and that's fine. It ties my curtains and bedspread together nicely. 

Including the wax, that I can use on other projects, this whole thing cost me $21. You really can't beat that for as nice as it looks.

Hope you like it too! 

Tool Belt Momma

Repurposed drawer into message and mail center

If you don't know by now, I LOVE THE HABITAT RESTORE! I have heard that not every Restore is as great as mine. Having only been to one other, I really can't say, but the one in Fort Wayne, IN and one of the ones in Louisville Kentucky are pretty darn awesome. Anyway, On my very first trip to the Restore, I found some old drawers for $2 a piece. I was new to all of this repurposing thing so I thought this would be an easy first project

As you can see not much to it.

A few weeks later I was at the restore again and found 7 more drawers and this time they were only $1 each. I snatched them up because I had gotten such a positive response from people who had seen the first ones. I figured they would make great gifts or I could sell them. 

My mom retired in July of this year so I thought one of these would make a great retirement gift. I sanded it down and painted it with leftover paint from my door turned hall tree project posted earlier. I then used some chalkboard paint I had bought for Beatlekid 1 , because well...Pinterest enough said, and I painted half of the inside of the drawer with chalkboard paint. I was trying to decide what to put in the other half. I had bought some cork board and that had been my original plan, but for some reason I could not find them this day. Looking around I found an old A/C vent cover. It had slots, so I thought, Hey this would be great for mail sorting! Yeah that's how my mind works. So I screwed the vent cover on and I had an amazing and inexpensively made ($2) message/mail center. Here is the finished product that my mom absolutely loved.

Sorry I don't have any before pics, but it was a drawer, you get the idea.

Hall Tree From a Salvaged Door

I picked up this old door at the Habitat Restore. It was outside with a big FREE sign on it. I didn't know what I would do with it, but hey it was free so I took it..The window was made from plexi-glass and it was broken so the first thing I did was pop it out. The door had certainly seen better days. It had been painted several times and it looked like someone had tried to be crafty and put crackle paint on one side. After much thought and a facebook friends pole I decided on a hall tree.

The first thing I needed to do was remove the frame. Once that was done I picked up some Citristrip to remove the old paint. I decided to leave the crackle side alone since it would be against the wall. Now the bottle of Citristrip says you can put it on and let it sit for up to 24 hours. Let me just say, DON'T LET IT SIT THAT LONG!!! 

 I put on the Citristrip and got busy doing some other things, but decided to check on it after an hour just see if there was any progress. There certainly was. This is what it looked like.

 I got my handy scraper out and ran it across the door and the paint came right off. This was the first time I had used Citristrip so I was pretty impressed. There were a few places that I had not gotten it on very well  so I decided to cover them again and wait until the next day to finish the job. This was a bad idea. The Citristrip seemed to harden and it was like trying to scrap gum off of the door. What could have been done in about 30 minutes took almost two hours to finish scrapping off. 

Once I finally got most of the paint off the door looked like this.

It wasn't pretty, because there was still some paint in a few places, but it was good enough for me to move onto my next step.

PAINT!!!

I am a big fan of Lowe's oops paint. If you don't know what this is, it is those mis-tint cans that people didn't like for one reason or another. It was mixed wrong or it didn't turn out the color they were hoping for. Lowe's sells the gallon size cans for $5 and the pint cans for $1. Every time I am in there I check their oops paint for a color I could possible use at some point on a project. My daughter says my garage looks like a paint store, but I like it. Anyway, I had recently picked up a pint can of a dark teal paint. As I was checking out, I had to wait for manager over ride, because mis-tint paint doesn't ring up right like it does at Home Depot, I was talking to the check out girl about the paint and my plans for it. She suggested mixing it with a lighter color that I already had. Surprisingly I had not even thought of that. So when I was getting ready to paint the door I was searching my paint supply. I found half a can of off white and about a third of a can of grey left over from when I had painted my bedroom. I poured all three paints into a five gallon bucket and came up with a lovely shade of light blue.

Once I had painted the door it was time to turn it into that hall tree. Now you should know that I have quite a bit of miscellaneous items in my garage so I started there looking for things to add to this project. My original intent was to put a mirror at the top and put either a shelf or a table at the bottom. I was trying to make the mirror work when I got carried away and accidentally broke the frame for the mirror. It was several small mirrors so I couldn't just get another frame so it was onto plan B. My oldest daughter had brought home some wire mesh from her school when her art teacher was cleaning out her classroom at the end of the year. She knows me well enough to know I can make something out of just about anything. So I decided to put it in the opening at the top of the door. I had to add a couple of pieces of scrap wood to the inside of the window so that the wire mesh would fit. In the process, I salvaged a small piece of the broken mirror frame and put a small, and I do mean small, shelf at the bottom of the window.

I had also picked up various coat hooks at the Restore so my next task was screwing them into the door.

                                

 As you can see the hooks do not match and I like it!










Once the hooks were on I needed to find something to put at the bottom of the door. I had a small end table, but it was too small. I had a bedside table/cabinet, but it wasn't wide enough. I then decided to use an old suitcase I had picked up at a garage sale for .50 cents. It looked great with it and it was the right width. Only problem was, I could not open it once I screwed it into the door. (DOH!) so I had to get creative and build a bench using things I had around the garage. I have a ton of pallets so the top of the bench was easy. Sand it down, paint it, no big deal. The challenging part was the legs. After much trial and error I decided to cut an old column from the front porch I had found again at the RESTORE! I cut it down to size, sanded it and painted it and I had a pretty awesome bench if I do say so myself.

No it isn't perfect, and the legs don't match, but I think that is one of the things I like about it. My next step was to screw the bench to the door. 

After a little distressing and the addition of a little bit of bronze paint to make it look aged and a can of sealer,  I was done. I just had one problem. I was afraid that since the bench was not very big that once coats and things were added that it might lean forward. Being ever so resourceful I remembered that I had some leftover pieces from when I took my girls swing set down a few years ago. (I knew I needed to keep that stuff) Using two of the metal corner pieces, I was able to give it a little more sturdiness. (Is that even a word?)

Finally it was done and I just needed to get it inside. This sucker is heavy and I was alone! I basically walked it into my house. Thankfully it only had to go as far as right inside the door from my garage. 

Here it is being used in all its glory.

Not much in the way of room for shoes(three girls live in this house), but I am happy with how it turned out. When it was all said and done I put about $45 into it.

Materials:

Door - Free

Wire mesh - Free

Coat hooks - $5

Porch column -$10

Paint and sealer -$10

Citristrip - $20 (and I still had some left over for another project)

Pallet wood - free

Time: About 6 hours 

And there you have it! A hall tree made from a Salvaged Door. Share some love and let me know what you think. I am new at all of this so I still make mistakes, but that's how we learn right!

Tool Belt Momma